David Heinemann

Kansas Historical Foundation
Board of Directors
Elected to board: 2009

Dave Heinemann earned his bachelor's degree in Political Science and German from Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1967, and attended graduate school in International Relations at the University of Kansas. He received his Juris Doctorate from Washburn University School of Law in 1973.

Heinemann was first elected to the Kansas House of Representatives from Garden City in 1968. He was speaker pro tem for two terms and chaired several committees including the energy and natural resources committee. In 1995 he became general counsel and later executive director of the Kansas Corporation Commission. From 1999 to 2003 Heinemann served as special assistant to the secretary of the Kansas Department of Revenue and also as head of the agency's office of administrative appeals.

From 1987 to 1994 he served by appointment of President Ronald Reagan as a U. S. commissioner and alternate chairman of the Kansas-Oklahoma Arkansas River Commission. He has served as a member and chairman of the Kansas Geological Survey advisory council.

He is president of the Shawnee County Historical Society, vice-chair of the Kansas Guardianship Program board of directors, and director of the Kansas Oral History Project.

He and his wife, Kristine, have two daughters and four grandchildren. An avid photographer, he has documented statehouse legislative history since the late 1960s. When President Gerald Ford delivered a major address to a joint session of the Kansas Legislature in 1975, he was the only non-press photographer to be admitted.

Heinemann was first elected to the Kansas Historical Foundation Board of Directors in 2009.